Whither Life on Earth and Beyond? Positing Justice as a Fundamental Principle
By
Prof M A Sofi, New Age Islam
27 May 2022
Religious
People Are Often Mocked For Belief And Interaction With A Non-Physical
Supernatural God
Main
Points:
1. Its justice
which raises the human life from the level of farce.
2. Search for
truth – that necessitates rational thinking – predisposes the heart to the
virtues of justice, honesty and humility.
3. The idea of
absolute truth is no more than a chimera unless it’s sought to be located
within a given logical framework.
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At the
outset, I must confess I’m not eminently qualified to broach a theme about
which I can’t boast of more than a smattering, a nodding acquaintance as
distinct from a deep understanding involving the many facets of what has always
been an extremely complex issue. In the lines that follow, an attempt has been
made to put forth my thoughts surrounding the idea of justice being posited as
pivotal in order to make sense of life as we confront it on a daily basis.
As a
disclaimer, it’s not intended to invoke scriptures to drive home the importance
of the idea of God (Deity, Supreme Divinity) or of the Day of Judgement (Resurrection,
Reincarnation as per Christian/Jewish and Hindu traditions, respectively) which
constitute fundamental articles of faith across religions and schools of
religious thought around the world. Nor is it intended, for the purposes of
this essay, to make a case for a ‘Muslim or a Christian God’ being advocated as
‘superior’ to those being followed as such by people owing allegiance to other
religions. The idea is to make a humble attempt, without being pretentious, to
lend a certain amount of credibility to these notions as fundamental pillars of
religious thought on the basis of the idea of justice while making a case for
accepting and according it the status of a universal epistemic virtue across
castes, creeds, communities and religious persuasions.
We begin
with the following passage from Francis Su’s recent fascinating piece “Can
Mathematics be Spiritual?”
“In both
mathematics and in most religions, one comes face-to-face with the reality of
immortal objects that we cannot see. Religious people are often mocked for
belief and interaction with a non-physical supernatural God. And yet, such
mockers have all learned to count, to interact and reason with non-physical
Platonist conceptions of whole numbers, and even to apply them to what we call
(by contrast) “the real world.” Mathematics puts us “in touch with immortality
in the form of eternal mathematical laws” as the historian of mathematics D. E.
Smith once noted. Additionally, many learned scientists have marvelled at how
this interaction can even take place. Einstein himself asked, “How can it be
that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought which is
independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of
reality?” In other words, it should surprise us that Platonic mathematical
objects interact with the real world so constructively — but we take this
marvel for granted.”
The above
paragraph helps to put into perspective an oft-encountered experience of
confronting those who are seen to scoff at the very thought of a non-physical
‘non-existent’ being deified as an all knowing, all powerful supernatural
entity called God, even as these same sceptics are found to be perfectly at
peace with such non-physical, ethereal entities as numbers, abstract structures
like the Monster (group), the random matrices or exotic spheres in mathematics
or quarks, quanta and strings in physics. Unlike in the case of mathematics
where, for instance, mathematicians are comfortable with the idea – and the
proof - that something called the Axiom of Choice and its negation are both
consistent with the standard axioms of set theory, at least many of them - and
many more non-mathematician scientists - are dismissive of the idea of an
omnipotent God being up there and conducting the proceedings in running the
universe ‘from behind the scene’ as it were. In the lines that follow, an
attempt has been made to propose the idea of justice as an axiom – as one does
in mathematics – in order to show why the idea of God or the day of
resurrection has to be factored in our discussion to make whatever little sense
we can of life and the world around ourselves.
Justice
as a Vital Component of the Belief System
The fine
balance and the sense of proportion that pervades the natural phenomena playing
themselves out in life and elsewhere show themselves up essentially as
different manifestations of the idea of justice without which such a delicate
balance of competing forces in nature cannot be imagined. It should help to
understand how the idea of the role of justice in life and human relations
harks back to the role of prime numbers in mathematics and how they enjoy a
pivotal position among the integers, or how a thorough understanding of matter
essentially reduces to a deep insight into the elementary particles which
constitute the basic building blocks of matter. Come to think about it, its
justice which raises the human life from the level of farce and gives it some
form of grace and dignity without which the society is fated to perish as a
civilised, egalitarian entity where people are at peace with themselves and
with nature. That makes a strong case for the institutionalisation of justice
and fair play that ought to be accorded their rightful place and priority in
the society.
On the
other side involving real life situations, it’s the acceptance of the postulate
of justice that rules out the possibility of life and the universe at large
having come about merely as a result of an accident, without a design behind
it, as the agnosts or naysayers would have us believe.
Whereas it
ought to be conceded that the laws of science do not necessarily rule out the
possibility of such a cosmic accident having come about prior to the creation
of the universe and life on earth, it makes sense to argue that a system where
justice stands denied or dispensed selectively would result in the idea of a
life where individual might would reign supreme, and the strong and the
powerful would ride roughshod over the weak and the dispossessed and get away
with it without having to pay for such transgressions. In real, practical
terms, it’s only in the presence of a robust system where the idea of justice
has been accorded its well-deserved primacy would it be reasonable to hope for
the weak and the dispossessed to claim their rightful place in the system while
ensuring that those are held to account who had feted themselves on the toil
and blood of the weak and the underprivileged during their life on earth.
In fact,
it’s the idea of creation of life and the underlying design of the cosmos,
marked as these processes are by a breath-taking sense of proportion and a
grand design, that necessitate the postulate of justice being weighed in
without which the presence of such proportion and design would have been
incomprehensible.
Rational
Thinking Fosters Justice, Honesty and Humility
Search for
truth – that necessitates rational thinking – predisposes the heart to the
virtues of justice, honesty and humility.
Once it’s
argued, as we have done above, that mathematics seeks to restore order and
design from the vortex of utter chaos and commotion in the world of ideas
within and in the world around ourselves without, it becomes clear that the
endeavor of mathematics bears uncanny similarity with the idea of justice which
is sought to achieve precisely that order in the society. Justice, equality and
equity are to order, design and a sense of proportion in exactly the same way
as injustice, inequality and inequity are to chaos, clutter and disorder. A
further instance of commonality of our experiences in mathematics and religion
may be sought in the realisation how such epistemic values as the dignity of
human beings, the corrupting nature of sin, the importance of justice, and the
power of forgiveness are all truths that can be felt profoundly in a religious
experience as much as the beauty of symmetry or a deep connection between
disparate ideas in mathematics are felt and experienced in the world of
mathematics that often elicit profound awe and astonishment.
Conclusion
Application
of logic in mathematics is premised on the acceptance of a set of certain
‘self-evident’ truths called axioms. In the same vein, an attempt to apply
logical reasoning in social situations can’t be undertaken in vacuum, unless
that effort is bolstered by a set of principles that derive from a certain
belief system of the individual. By definition, being illogical means doing
things that, by definition, go against logic, or cause logical contradictions.
Here, it’s important to note that what counts as a logical contradiction is in
fact an assertion that is seen to contravene the established principles within
a given system of beliefs or axioms.
This is a
crucial point because otherwise, one person’s logic might look like idiocy to
another person. The point is that the idea of absolute truth is no more than a
chimera unless it’s sought to be located within a given logical framework where
a certain conclusion as truth has been arrived at on the strength of the axioms
and foundational principles defining that system. Here mathematics comes across
as an important enabling tool to achieve that and that necessitate creating
conditions where the society is exposed to a certain basic level of
mathematical familiarity/ maturity and the mind trained to think rationally and
thus with honesty and justice. That would make a case for promoting the culture
of mathematics in the society and thus restore to reason and critical thought
the rightful place that they deserve so as to foster values of justice and
peace in the society.
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Prof. M. A. Sofi is currently NBHM Visiting
Professor at JK Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Srinagar He previously
taught at AMU, Aligarh, Central University of Kashmir, Srinagar and University
of Kashmir, Srinagar Did Master’s from AMU, Aligarh (1978) and Ph. D
Mathematics at IIT Kanpur(1982) Presently living in Srinagar, Jammu and
Kashmir.
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-science/earth-justice-fundamental-principle-/d/127102
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